Orange County is the only major metropolitan area in the United States with an African-American community that's less than 5 percent of the entire population; we clock in at an embarrassing 3 percent. Yay, diversity! We are reminded of what happens when gabachos don't grow up among blacks on Jan. 17, when a Laguna Beach surf shop offers a special Martin Luther King Jr. sale: all black items half-off. HAR HAR! Our marking of the civil-rights martyr gets even more hilarious a week later, when a UC Irvine cafeteria sells fried chicken and waffles in his honor. What we learned: Why black people don't live here.

Chapman University undergrad John Taylor Skilling is found dead in his Orange apartment Feb. 3 near bottles of medication. He was the son of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, who is denied permission to leave his federal prison cell to attend the funeral. What we learned: There is something worse than prison.

Finding out in February who resides in that isolated house, lit up night after night, in the rolling hills above Brea isn't a startling revelation, but it was fun to wonder what it would be like to live in those hills, separated from humanity, surrounded by rusty old oil derricks in the shadow of a crumbling nuclear missile base. We can hear the lonely yip of coyotes and the whirring of nodding donkeys as the 57 freeway rumbles in the distance just thinking about it. What we learned:The structure, which really looks like a house, is a Cooper and Brain Oil Co. facility.